What an incredible first round of the first ever EBUCC 2018!
The beach was beautiful this Friday morning, with amazing clouds and contrasts to frame top level beach ultimate. The weather was windless and by 7:40am, mixed teams had already found their way to the beach for warm ups and drills in preparation for the first round at 9am. Each country’s clubs from the other divisions were also on the sideline supporting their teammates.
In this first round, the 1st team of each pool of 4 played against the 4th team in their pool, and the 2nd against the 3rd. There were lots of very exciting games and definitely some unexpected results in all three divisions.
In the mixed division, the first game results of the of the tournament the 3rd team in the group Dutch Grut, matched up against 2nd team Solebang from Switzerland, played exceptionally well, and won 13-3 a full 15 minutes before the end of the game. From the sideline, it was amazing to see Grut’s speedy women routinely getting 15-20 meter separation from their defenders on long hucks while their men stayed back to handle and swing.
Also in the mixed division, UFA from Portugal also had an exciting game against the French team Tourne-Disc, coming back from a 3-1 loss at the beginning and ending it by winning 13-6. Two other strong victories included a 13-4 for Russo Turisto from Russia against LOL from Hungary and 13-7 for Corocotta (Spain) against the Swiss team, Crazy Dogs. We can’t wait to see how the pool play ends up in this division!
The results from the woman’s division were super exciting. The Cosmic Girls from Russia shook the woman’s division with a bang, getting a 13-1 win against Portugal team DiscOver. Another 1st vs 4th seed yielded a close score of 12-10, with the veteran Copenhagen Spinners matching up against the young Dyki Krali from the Ukraine. DK held tough going toe to toe with the Spinners but in the end couldn’t muster enough to upset the Danes.
And the third game of the day was the Men’s division. Ireland’s Sandjob fought against long running Danish team Ragnarok but came up short with a few too many handling mistakes losing 10-9 allowing the 3rd seed to upset them. Regional rivals Shadows from Russia versus Nova from the Ukraine had the largest sideline action with other russian and ukrainian women’s and mixed teams cheering them both in an exciting top versus bottom pool seed. The Ukrainians showed a lot of heart losing 13-9 at the cap in a hotly contested but highly spirited match-up.
With the wind picking up ever so slightly, we might expect some teams to experiment with zone but we’ve seen only person matchup in the morning competition.,
We (Ed and Sofia) are eager with anticipation for all the action this afternoon!
